Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Just Who is Michael Voris?

You should because as our Church slowly recovers from the liberal grossly-misnamed “spirit of Vatican II” which has nothing whatsoever to do with the authentic teachings of the conclave, increasingly people like me are turning to a middle-aged, splendidly educated layman with a degree in Sacred Theology who propels an almost daily TV commentary on Church matters on the Internet which you can subscribe to and receive via email free by first going to RealCatholicTV.com.

The Church’s Courageous TV Defender.

Voris is, in my estimation, the best thing that has happened to Catholic TV communications since the end of the era of Fulton Sheen. In fact for today’s problems he’s better than Sheen. Why? Because brilliant as he was Sheen was a bishop and couldn’t strike at the soft and hard-shell heresies coming from some current bishops and priests. It’s not good for bishops to criticize others although to be sure, Sheen had his innings with some of them including his Ordinary in New York, Francis Cardinal Spellman.

DIGRESSION: At the height of his fame when he was raising millions for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith which he directed, Sheen was challenged by Spellman who wanted to control the money and funnel much of it into the archdiocese of New York. Reason: Because Spellman ran the archdiocese and the Society was headquartered there, Spellman carried the title of Chairman. The battle ended up before the Pope who sided with Sheen. Vexed because he lost the battle, Spellman pronounced that henceforth and for so long as Sheen were to live, Sheen could not deliver a homily in the archdiocese and had to remain silent about the order. As a clergymen under Spellman’s control Sheen had to be silent about this order throughout his life. END OF DIGRESSION.

As a layman, Mike Voris cannot be shut up as was Sheen—which makes him the perfect militant fighter for Catholic authenticism given the problems the Church has with weak, liberal, vacillating prelates today.

Who is this guy who’s not just courageously fofrthright…in fact downright gutsy….in defending the Church from enemies inside and without, primarily ecclesiastics and erring theologians who sway with the wafting of every liberal breeze? I interviewed Voris, 49, when he was at O’Hare between planes and came away convinced that this ex-TV anchorman-producer-investigative reporter and theological scholar who earned his spikes at CBS and Fox News is just the ticket for us—especially in Chicago—who have endured decades of error, ecclesial winking as liberal politicians espousing abortion and gay marriage—trot up to receive Communion in obvious mortal sin but who are received….sometimes even honored….without question or criticism.

Here in Illinois the list includes the most prominent Catholics in the state including the U. S. Senate’s majority whip, the governor, the attorney general, the controller, the Chicago mayor, the president of the Cook county board—all Democrats….and the sure-to-be-elected female Republican candidate for controller, who prides herself on her Czech nationality, is a former state treasurer, state GOP chairman and 2006 Republican gubernatorial nominee a one-time pro-lifer, who served in the state House and Senate, switched when she perceived her popularity would benefit as result, has since then voted and exhorted pro-abort and rides conspicuously in gay pride parades along with the Democrats.

Who is Michael Voris?

Mike Voris is a former seminarian, single, who packed it in to become a CBS journalist in New York where he worked alongside Dan Rather (with whom Voris was not impressed) and as a muck-raking TV investigative reporter and anchor in several smaller cities. The pay was much better than regular workaday scribes and he freely acknowledged to me that in those years he “lived a horrible life in an immoral cesspool.” Throughout those years, his mother, like Augustine’s Monica, scolded, remonstrated with him and prayed mightily for her son—to no avail. But his life turned around after a shock when his favorite brother, in the seeming bloom of health, dropped dead in his mid-40s.

So shaken out of his hedonist past, Michael packed it in once again and resolved to use his finely-honed communications skills in eloquent support of God and His Church. Mike scooped up $700,000 of his savings and started a TV business with himself as an unabashedly militant but thoroughly responsible Catholic commentator…writing, researching, producing and performing in short erudite yet punchy TV commentaries for the Internet that would be sent out free to everyone who wishes to subscribe. The theory is you subscribe and if you have a few bucks you chip in to keep the apostolate going. So far financially it’s tough going but Mike has the firm belief that God will see it through.

His commentaries are from 2 to 5 minutes or so in length and he begins each one with the same words….”Welcome to the Vortex where lies and falsehoods are trapped and exposed”….winding up each commentary with the crisp signature: “This is Michael Voris.”

Excerpts from Voris’ Commentaries: Straight—No Chaser.

What are his topics? His commentaries are sometimes pegged closely to the news involving Catholicism. Here is a segment that touched on two very different priests, two very different bishops.

August 24. “Well, now, here’s one that’s kind of strange…very indicative of the state of the Church today. Two bishops…two priests…two very different cases. Case No. 1…In Nashville, Tennessee a local priest garnered headlines when a video posted on the Internet of him saying that the Pope should apologize for Church teaching on contraception. The priest’s name is Joseph Patrick Breen. He has a reputation for being an outspoken liberal and his comments didn’t really come as a shock to anyone.

“But they did prompt a quick reaction from Bishop David Choby who told Fr. Breen—retract what you have said publicly or face punishment. Good for the bishop! Fr. Breen retracted.

“Now let’s move a little farther south….the diocese of El Paso where another priest went public about Church teaching also. The case is the exact opposite of the Nashville case. Fr. Michael Rodriguez wrote a column for the local secular paper where he forthrightly defended and promoted Church teaching as regards homosexuality. The case also prompted a rebuke from the local bishop—Armando Ochoa….who upbraided the priest indirectly saying Fr.Rodriguez’s `opinion’ didn’t reflect the necessary elements of being compassionate, tolerant, pastoral, inclusive, dignity, respect—in short every buzzword used by the liberal crowd to gloss over the real charitable need to say: Continuing in mortal sin leads to misery in this life and damnation in the next which is what Fr. Rodriguez was saying.

“And please, skip the predictable line about well, we can’t say if they are in a state of mortal sin. No we can’t—but we can and should say Stop doing what you’re doing because it’s evil and there’s a very good chance you may very well be in the state of mortal sin. Why gamble like that with your eternal destiny?

“What we see here in these two cases which happened in the past week is the very real dichotomy that exists in the Church today—renegade liberal priests shooting off their mouths in public and bishops using the `charity’ argument as a skirt to hide behind when it comes to clearly and unambiguously proclaiming the teachings of the Church…

“…When liberals speak about Church teaching you scratch your head. When non-liberals speak, it’s perfectly clear. Such is the state of affairs in the Church today. Be careful when you listen to a priest or bishop. If you find yourself scratching your head, go somewhere else. I’m Michael Voris.”

Decadent Culture Could Hasten Nation’s Demise.

Another captures with poignant realism about the likely future if this nation doesn’t come to its senses and scrap the hedonism that passes for contemporary culture.

August 8. “Sometimes we Catholics can get a little myopic in our vision….Does anyone who is a faithful Catholic really think that things are going to continue as they are indefinitely? I don’t mean the end of the world I mean the end of this current world—the culture. How long do any of us think that God will simply allow the current state of affairs to continue? Millions upon millions of surgical abortions. Sex having been debased for so long it’s now an acceptable industry. Families destroyed over sex—but not always. Children left fatherless—and on and on.

“Almighty God can address any situation any way He sees fit. Sometimes, as in the days of Noah, He intervenes directly and decidedly. Other times He allows nature to simply take its course. If a society elevates pleasure and self-centeredness to the level of a god, then that society will ultimately fall apart. That’s a law of the Universe. When cultures diminish themselves by killing off large portions of the next generation, economies begin to stagnate. When political leaders turn their thoughts to themselves at the expense of the governed, the establishment begins to break down.

“The only guarantee to prevent this sort of thing is a good moral order. And a good moral order is only guaranteed by following Christ….We like many others see a culture committing suicide---and too many in the Church remaining quiet about it.”

The “Faith Only” Weakness of Protestantism.

June 6. “…If you want to completely waste your time, try talking about faith with a committed Protestant…Let’s remember one very important fact. Protestantism is a heresy. That does not mean that individual Protestants are heretics but the system of beliefs they subscribe to is a heretical system…

“A friend invited me to accompany him last night to the home of a dyed-in-the-wool Lutheran who he had been having some theological discussions with over at Facebook…In short here are some of his [the Lutheran’s] conclusions: As long as you believe in Jesus your works don’t affect your salvation. You can kill, hire prostitutes, rob banks and destroy property, die of a heart attack seconds later and you go to heaven. What you do doesn’t matter. Those examples, by the way, were his.

“Another point of his: All believers are equally righteous. When I asked him if that made him equal to, say, John the Baptist in heaven this very moment, he refused to answer the question. He simply kept saying we’re all the same. When we got into Scripture discussions, he kept insisting that the Bible interprets itself. To which I replied: Well, if it’s self-interpreting why are we arguing about it? Again, no reply.

“…One of the last things I said to him was: `If Protestants, specifically Lutherans (since he was a Lutheran) are so right and if Catholics are so wrong, why can’t Lutherans agree even among themselves? After all, there are three major Lutheran churches. One says the Bible is inerrant. The other supports abortion and homosexuality and women ministers. The other is a strange hybrid of the other two. His brilliant reply: “Those Lutheran churches are wrong!” To which I said:“You’re half right. All Lutheran churches are wrong.”

Modern Judaism.

Most commentators on religious topics are skittish of offending Jews—although to be sure, none other than the observant Norman Podhoretz in his recent book Why Are Jews Liberals? says forthrightly that traditionalist Orthodox believers aside, most modern adherents have scrapped the original Torah for what Podhoretz calls Torah II which is nothing more than the entirety of the liberal precepts of the modern Democratic party. He goes so far as to recall when Moses came down from the mountaintop with the Commandments and he found the Israelites worshiping the Golden Calf. God said “what a stiff-necked people!” Podhoretz concludes that the Golden Calf for most of today’s Jews is the liberal Democratic party. That conclusion stunned me.

Voris pointed out that recently a very liberal Rabbi had said that a Jew can be an atheist and still be a Jew which, Voris said, that confirms that Jews are not just members of a religion but are recognized as an ethnic group. That surprised me. Here is Michael Voris on Judaism.

August 16. “Now when we start looking at the Jewish faith some things pop out right away. After the destruction of the Temple in 70AD by the Roman general Titus, the Jewish faith ceased being what it had been up to that point. The major hallmarks of Judaism (the religion, remember we’re talking about) had been that they had a Temple and offered sacrifice. The entire religion was focused on this one singular point. They also had a King and land which helped form them into a religious nation. Once, however, the Romans had done their work the Jews as the religionists of the Covenant, no longer existed.

“Gone was the Temple, Temple sacrifice and the Jewish priesthood. These were the hallmarks, the essential non-debatable aspects, of being a religious Jew. No Temple, no sacrifice, no priesthood, no Judaism. What replaced it and what has come down to us today—Rabbinical Judaism. This is not the Judaism of the Covenant. It is a man-made religion.”

This will provoke some Jews as his words earlier provoke Protestants and some Catholics….no doubt about it. The organization Catholic Answers has declined to continue to distribute his tapes because he has criticized some bishops. But you know where I stand after a serious encounter with a prelate last April who called me a hate monger while at the same time he had the archdiocese honor none other than Fr. Michael Pfleger as a crusader for social justice, the priest who stood before the store of a legally constituted and registered gun dealer and bellowed through a megaphone “Come out or we’ll snuff you out! Come out of there or we’ll drag you out like the rat you are!” After he received the award he gave a contrite sounding speech only to say the next day that the archdiocese had made him say those placating words. So much for the archdiocese’s conception of social justice.

RealCatholicTV.com’s Financial Support.

I asked Michael at the conclusion of our interview if he has a Sugar Daddy.

He said “a what?” I said again: “A Sugar Daddy! A Daddy Warbucks!”

This prompted from him hearty laughter. He said: Simply put there is no Sugar Daddy or Daddy Warbucks. Supporters who appreciate his work send in donations. But there is no regular money-flow. He himself supplies much of the capital needed from his own pocket which is rapidly diminishing. He is his own technological guru. A tech guy works for such peanuts as is embarrassing—works there because he believes Michael’s work is invaluable. He has two highly skilled women who are almost volunteers they are paid so little and with great infrequency.

Tell you what. Whether you’re Catholic or Protestant or Jew go to his website and watch Michael and tell me what you think. I think he’s terrific and just what the Church needs. TomRoeser.com

Some say Fr. John Corapi is a really hard preacher. Listen to this YouTube video of Michael Voris as he "discusses" the current state of the bishops of the United States. [In it, Archbishops Raymond Burke, formerly of La Crosse and St. Louis, now in the Vatican, and our own John Nienstedt come in for praise from him. Whew! God Bless Archbishop Nienstedt! And Archbishop Burke, who is highly likely to become a Cardinal in the next month or two when the Pope calls a consistory.]